Several types of memory devices, such as Flash memories and Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), use arrays of analog memory cells for storing data. Flash memory devices are described, for example, by Bez et al., in “Introduction to Flash Memory,” Proceedings of the IEEE, volume 91, number 4, Apr., 2003, pages 489-502, which is incorporated herein by reference.
In such memory devices, each analog memory cell typically comprises a transistor, which holds a certain amount of electric charge that represents the information stored in the cell. The electric charge written into a particular cell influences the “threshold voltage” of the cell, i.e., the voltage that needs to be applied to the cell so that the cell will conduct current.
Some memory devices, commonly referred to as Single-Level Cell (SLC) devices, store a single bit of information in each memory cell. Typically, the range of possible threshold voltages of the cell is divided into two regions. A voltage value falling in one of the regions represents a “0” bit value, and a voltage belonging to the second region represents “1”. Higher-density devices, often referred to as Multi-Level Cell (MLC) devices, store two or more bits per memory cell. In multi-level cells, the range of threshold voltages is divided into more than two regions, with each region representing more than one bit.
Multi-level Flash cells and devices are described, for example, by Eitan et al., in “Multilevel Flash Cells and their Trade-Offs,” Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), New York, N.Y., pages 169-172, which is incorporated herein by reference. The paper compares several kinds of multilevel Flash cells, such as common ground, DINOR, AND, NOR and NAND cells.
Eitan et al., describe another type of analog memory cell called Nitride Read Only Memory (NROM) in “Can NROM, a 2-bit, Trapping Storage NVM Cell, Give a Real Challenge to Floating Gate Cells?” Proceedings of the 1999 International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials (SSDM), Tokyo, Japan, Sep. 21-24, 1999, pages 522-524, which is incorporated herein by reference. NROM cells are also described by Maayan et al., in “A 512 Mb NROM Flash Data Storage Memory with 8 MB/s Data Rate”, Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2002), San Francisco, Calif., Feb. 3-7, 2002, pages 100-101, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Other exemplary types of analog memory cells are Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) cells, magnetic RAM (MRAM) cells and phase change RAM (PRAM, also referred to as Phase Change Memory—PCM) cells. FRAM, MRAM and PRAM cells are described, for example, by Kim and Koh in “Future Memory Technology including Emerging New Memories,” Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Microelectronics (MIEL), Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, May 16-19, 2004, volume 1, pages 377-384, which is incorporated herein by reference.
In some applications, data is stored in memory cells at varying densities. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,008, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a multiple-bit-per-cell memory that includes multiple memory arrays, wherein the number of bits stored per cell is separately set for each of the memory arrays. Memory arrays that testing proves are accurate when writing, storing, and reading a larger number of bits per cell are set to store more bits per cell, and memory arrays that cannot accurately write, store, or read as many bits per cell are set to store fewer bits per cell.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,456,528, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, a flash non-volatile memory system that normally operates its memory cells in multiple storage states is provided with the ability to operate some selected or all of its memory cell blocks in two states instead. The two states are selected to be the furthest separated of the multiple states, thereby providing an increased margin during two-state operation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,167, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a memory system including an array of flash Electrically Erasable and Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) cells arranged in blocks of cells that are erasable together. The individual cells store more than one bit of data as a result of operating the individual cells with more than two detectable threshold ranges or states. Any portion of the array in which data is not stored can be used as a write cache, where individual ones of the cells store a single bit of data by operating with only two detectable threshold ranges. Data coming into the memory is initially written in available blocks in two states. At a later time, in the background, the cached data is read, compressed and written back into fewer blocks of the memory in multi-state.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,476, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes multi-bit-per-cell non-volatile memory, which stores different portions of a data stream using different numbers of bits per cell. In particular, data that requires a high degree of data integrity (e.g., the header of a data frame) is stored using a relatively small number of bits per memory cell. Data that is more error-tolerant (e.g., the main data representing music, images, or video) is stored using a relatively large number of bits per memory cell.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,643,169, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method for storing data in varying numbers of bits per cell depending on the type of data involved. The number of bits may be increased per cell when fidelity is less important. The number of bits per cell may be decreased when fidelity is more important. A memory, in some embodiments, may change between storage modes on a cell by cell basis.